Just wondering if this is normal or is my camera on the frits? I was at the zoo this morning with my sony DSC-D770 and noticed that when I would pop up the external flash, the batt meter would imeadiately start flashing and shut the camera down. I turn the cam off and back on and it registers 3/4 charge left again. Until I pop the flash again. ??? Did the same thing when I turned on the LCD.

Being that it is a D770 it is probably getting a little old (in digicam years that is) and you may need a new battery. The good news is that those batteries are plentiful and cheap nowadays as newer Sonys use different and smaller batteries. The bad news is that even if the battery is new it might be quite old since its manufacture date could be years ago.

And you might have a flash charging capacitor problem, which by your description is the more likely scenario. It takes a lot of power to charge this capacitor and they can go bad and short out which makes them use even more power and shut the camera down to protect things. I don't know if Sony even works on the old D770/D700 cameras anymore. It will be cheaper to try a different battery first.